Internet crime up, says IC3

A recent report by the “Internet Crime Complaint Center” has posted some interesting statistics about fraud on the web and how much it is costing the victims. Over the course of 2007, there were fewer complaints filed than in 2006 – but the value of those went up. In total, around $40 million more was reported than the year before.

Individual complaints averaged around $3500, which may look like a drop in the bucket of several million dollars, but if you lose $3500 to an Internet criminal you're probably hurting anyway. Some other interesting statistics of the report, which is downloadable from the IC3 site, include who was more likely to be defrauded and what the methods were. The “Nigerian” scam mails came in at a mere 1.1%, whereas auction fraud on sites like eBay was a behemoth 35.7%. Identity theft was also low on the list at only 2.9%.